Witch Lore and Scottish Castles: a Wikipedia Editathon
Eilean Donan Castle, by Diliff [CC BY-SA 3.0] via Wikimedia Commons
On Friday 27th September we were joined by castle buffs and witchcraft enthusiasts to help us improve the representation of Scottish witchcraft and heritage on Wikipedia. Our Witch Lore and Scottish Castles editathon event saw people coming together in the Digital Scholarship Centre of the Main Library to add ‘Witchlore’, stories and information relating to early modern witchcraft, to pages about Scottish castles and heritage locations.
A page created during our September editathon, CC-BY-SA by Ellie Whitehead
A number of Wikipedia pages about castles in Scotland neglected to mention their place in the stories of Scotland’s accused witches. The event looked to remedy this, adding some stories about witchcraft and accused witches to pages such as, Craigmillar Castle, Dirleton Castle, St Magnus Cathedral and Falkland Palace.
We also saw some brand-newpages about Scottish castles and heritage locations created! These include, Bass Castle, Logie House and Steading, and Poldrate Mill. Yet, despite our team’s valiant efforts – as ever – there is still more work to be done. See our worklist to take a look at a list of pages that we didn’t get around to improving and creating and have ago yourself! Some special mentions here would be to improve the mention of folklore in the Forvie Nature Reserve, Crichton Castle and Culross.
A diary from the University of Edinburgh Special Collections, CC-BY-SA by Ellie Whitehead
As part of this event, we also hosted an exhibitionof material about Scottish castles and witchcraft that the university special collections hold. It was a great addition to the event to be able to get our hands on these items and see some archival material that linked directly to what we were editing.
We got to see hand-painted watercolours and sketches of castles, hand-written legends from the Outer Hebridies about witches living in Kisimul Castle on Barra. We were able to leaf through architectural plans and drawings of Scotland’s Castles and seventeenth-century demonological books, such as George Sinclair’s Satans Invisible World Discovered.
An exhibition of material relating to witchcraft and castles from the University of Edinburgh Special Collections, CC-BY-SA by Ellie Whitehead
Keeping true to our heritage theme, Ruby Imrie also gave us a presentation on the Wikipedia photography project and competition Wiki Loves Monuments! This is an annual international competition that takes place in September which encourages people to go out and take photographs of heritage locations around them and upload them to Wikipedia. Take a look at some of the 1,645 images that were uploaded this September in Scotland in celebration of cultural heritage!
Overall, at this event saw 16 editors create 4 articles and edit 114! A grand total of 236 edits were made and 6000 words were added. Articles created or edited at this event have been viewed over 5500 times! See our dashboard for a more detailed insight into what we added.
This was a great event, which added some fantastic information about Scotland’s supernatural history and heritage onto Wikipedia. Thank you to all those who attended. Our next major event that we would like to highlight is the launch of our BRAND NEW Map of Scottish Witchcraft, Map of Memorials and Curious Edinburgh Walking Tour. Join us on the 23rd October between 3-4.30pm at Lecture Theatre 2.35 at the Edinburgh Futures Institute. Hope to see you there!
Written by Ellie Whitehead, Assistant Wikimedian in Residence
Glasgow City Chambers stairwell, by Stinglehammer CC-BY-SA 4.0 and past Wiki Loves Monuments upload stats
Wiki Loves Monuments is an international photo competition which takes part throughout the month of September every year, and is supported by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation.
You can see historic locations near you that are missing an image using our handy interactive map (red pins are locations without an open image).
The aim is to crowdsource as many high quality, openly licensed photos as possible of scheduled monuments and listed buildings throughout the world. Why? Because documenting our cultural heritage today is so important.
In the UK, there will be prizes for the best photos of a site in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales as well as prizes for the best UK photos overall. The latter will then be put forward for international prizes and there are some phenomenal pics from last year’s competition worldwide like this one of St Andrew’s Church (1747 — 1762) at dawn, Kyiv, Ukraine by Maksym Popelnyukh:
St Andrew’s Church (1747 — 1762) at dawn, Kyiv, Ukraine by Maksym Popelnyukh
Wikimedia Commons is a free repository of photographs, audio and video content that anyone can use, re-use or distribute. Images on Commons can also be used to illustrate Wikipedia articles – which can then be seen by a global audience. But not all of our rich heritage is represented – there are a number of gaps when it comes to the coverage of Scotland – and this year, we’d like to do what we can to change that. Especially when this is something fun and impactful we can all do.
Is your organisation or group looking for activities? Wiki Loves Monuments can be a great activity for local social or volunteer groups, not just those those concerned with photography or history. Why not organise a heritage walk to take pictures of listed buildings in the local area, and visit the local museum or library at the same time?
Collage of Wiki Loves Monuments pics by Stinglehammer, CC-BY-SA 4.0, taken during Glasgow Doors Open Day.
How do you take part?
Register for an accounton Wikimedia Commons. (Individuals only, no organisational accounts.) NB: If you already have a Wikipedia account, no need to register for a new account on Wikimedia Commons, you can use the same account for Wikimedia Commons. To enter the competition you must make sure that your account has a valid email address and that your email is activated.
To check that, once you have logged in, look for “My preferences” tab at the top right of the page. Click on it, and then select “enable email from other users.” This will allow the competition organisers and other registered users on Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons to contact you but will not make your email address publicly available.
Here’s a short 2 min video explainer by Classics student, Hannah Rothmann – you can use this new tool to view places to photo near you.
What should you photograph? How do you upload it?
In Scotland, the subjects eligible to be entered in Wiki Loves Monuments are those designated by Historic Environment Scotland references for Listed Buildings and Scheduled Monuments. If you’re not sure what buildings or monuments are classed as listed, don’t worry! We’ve got a great tool for you to use to upload your photos which includes an interactive map.
Green pins on the map indicate monuments which already have a photo on Wikimedia Commons, whereas red pins indicate where they are missing. Select your town or city then wander around your local area and look for buildings or monuments with red pins. You can take photos on smartphones, tablets or cameras and then upload them by selecting the appropriate pin on the map and clicking upload. Make sure that you are logged into your Wikimedia Commons account and follow the basic instructions. Every photo uploaded via the interactive map will be entered into the Wiki Loves Monuments.
You can take more than one photo of a building or monument. Preferably one should be a photo of the building or monument as a whole, but also use your photographic flair to add photos of key features, inside views or behind the scenes features that the public doesn’t normally get to see. Doors Open Day runs throughout September and is a great opportunity to organise a photography tour of a building or a tour of the local listed monuments in your town.
I’ve had the pleasure of visiting and snapping pictures of the Glasgow City Chambers, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, the Anchor Line bar, Garnethill Synagogue and the Arlington Baths among many other locations as part of Glasgow Doors Open Days.
Other tips:
Not sure that your photo skills are up to the competition? Don’t worry about it, the important thing is to take part. The more photos we can crowdsource, the more we can improve the coverage of listed buildings and monuments in Scotland, which is our ultimate goal. You can also check the Wiki Loves Monuments blog for tips on how to best take architectural photos.
Wiki Loves Monuments is aimed at everyone! You don’t have to be an expert photographer, or have prior experience with any of the Wikimedia projects.
The competition runs through the whole of September from the 1st till the 30th and any entries uploaded during that time will be part of the competition. Photos don’t have to have been taken during September though, so you can add old photos, as long as they’ve not been previously uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. Doors Open Day is a great opportunity to tie in with Wiki Loves Monuments, so if you know local DOD venues or if you work with a local heritage officer, please advertise it with them too.
How can you take part?
Do you work in or near a listed building? Add a picture!
Yet, we can take it for granted that our beautiful locations, listed buildings and monuments will always be there… something that can never be fully guaranteed. Political and economic tides change and forces of nature can have devastating effects as we have seen with the destruction of Palmyra in Syria, the devastation in Ukraine, the fires at the National Museum of Brazil, Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris and, more closer to home, the Mackintosh building fire at the Glasgow School of Art, Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s masterwork.
There is a grief that comes from these lost buildings, their histories and what they had come to represent & symbolise. Recognising that there can be a profound regret and sadness at the cultural losses and a significant connection with the past means we can act today to look around us and appreciate the cultural heritage all around us. Many of us have access to a camera or camera phone and may even walk past these buildings every day. All it takes is looking up, taking a snap and uploading it in seconds and you’ve done something amazing to help document our cultural heritage for all time.
That’s why it’s so important that we take the opportunity to document our cultural heritage now for future generations before it is too late. Share your high quality pics of listed buildings and monuments to Wikimedia Commons and help preserve our cultural heritage online. After days out, weekend breaks and holidays at home & abroad, there will be gigabytes of pics taken in recent months and years. These could remain on your memory card or be shared to Commons and help illustrate Wikipedia for the benefit of all.
Aside from being great fun, Wiki Loves Monuments is a way of capturing a snapshot of our nation’s cultural heritage for future generations and documenting our country’s most important historic sites. Don’t wait till it’s too late, do your bit today! Click here to view a map of your local area to get started.
You just take a quick look at the map, take a pic and upload. It takes seconds and is the easiest way to take part in this year’s competition.
If each one of us took just 1 pic, we’d have this sewn up in a few short weeks. Which is when Wiki Loves Monuments closes – end of 30 September 2024. But if you can do more then great.
#ScotWiki #WikiLovesMonuments
ps. If nothing else, let’s give our counterparts in Ireland, England and Wales a run for their money in terms of how many images we can upload. A little friendly rivalry never hurts, right?
Let’s smash it again this September! Let’s see if we can get pics from ALL over Scotland this year. Everyone is welcome to take part and every picture helps.
Wiki Loves Monuments is an international photo competition which takes part throughout the month of September every year, and is supported by the Wikimedia Foundation. The aim is to crowdsource as many high quality, openly licensed photos as possible of scheduled monuments and listed buildings throughout the world. Why? Because documenting our cultural heritage today is so important.In the UK, there will be prizes for the best photos of a site in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales as well as prizes for the best UK photos overall. The latter will then be put forward for international prizes.
Portobello beach by Photochrom Print Collection [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons is a free repository of photographs, audio and video content that anyone can use, re-use or distribute. Images on Commons can also be used to illustrate Wikipedia articles – which can then be seen by a global audience. But not all of our rich heritage is represented – there are a number of gaps when it comes to the coverage of Scotland – and this year, we’d like to do what we can to change that.Is your organisation or group looking for activities for September? Wiki Loves Monuments can be a great activity for local social or volunteer groups, not just those those concerned with photography or history. Why not organise a heritage walk to take pictures of listed buildings in the local area, and visit the local museum or library at the same time?
How do you take part?
Register for an account on Wikimedia Commons. (Individuals only, no organisational accounts.) If you already have a Wikipedia account, no need to register for a new account on Wikimedia Commons, you can use the same account for Wikimedia Commons. To enter the competition you must make sure that your account has a valid email address and that your email is activated. To check that, once you have logged in, look for “My preferences” tab at the top right of the page. Click on it, and then select “enable email from other users.” This will allow the competition organisers and other registered users on Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons to contact you but will not make your email address publicly available.
Wiki Loves Monuments – dynamic map of Edinburgh showing listed buildings requiring an image (in red).
What should you photograph? How do you upload it?
In Scotland, the subjects eligible to be entered in Wiki Loves Monuments are those designated by Historic Environment Scotland references for Listed Buildings and Scheduled Monuments. If you’re not sure what buildings or monuments are classed as listed, don’t worry! We’ve got a great tool for you to use to upload your photos which includes an interactive map.
Blue pins on the map indicate monuments which already have a photo on Wikimedia Commons, whereas red pins indicate where they are missing. Select your town or city then wander around your local area and look for buildings or monuments with red pins. You can take photos on smartphones, tablets or cameras and then upload them by selecting the appropriate pin on the map and clicking upload. Make sure that you are logged into your Wikimedia Commons account and follow the basic instructions. Every photo uploaded via the interactive map will be entered into the Wiki Loves Monuments.
You can take more than one photo of a building or monument. Preferably one should be a photo of the building or monument as a whole, but also use your photographic flair to add photos of key features, inside views or behind the scenes features that the public doesn’t normally get to see. Doors Open Day runs throughout September and is a great opportunity to organise a photography tour of a building or a tour of the local listed monuments in your town.
Last year I had the pleasure of visiting and snapping pictures of the Glasgow City Chambers, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, the Anchor Line bar, Garnethill Synagogue and the Arlington Baths among many other locations as part of Glasgow Doors Open Days 2018.
Other tips:
Not sure that your photo skills are up to the competition? Don’t worry about it, the important thing is to take part. The more photos we can crowdsource, the more we can improve the coverage of listed buildings and monuments in Scotland, which is our ultimate goal. You can also check the Wiki Loves Monuments blog for tips on how to best take architectural photos.
Wiki Loves Monuments is aimed at everyone! You don’t have to be an expert photographer, or have prior experience with any of the Wikimedia projects.
The competition runs through the whole of September from the 1st till the 30th and any entries uploaded during that time will be part of the competition. Photos don’t have to have been taken during September though, so you can add old photos, as long as they’ve not been previously uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. Doors Open Day is a great opportunity to tie in with Wiki Loves Monuments, so if you know local DOD venues or if you work with a local heritage officer, please advertise it with them too.
How can you take part?
Do you work in or near a listed building? Add a picture!
Yet, we can take it for granted that our beautiful locations, listed buildings and monuments will always be there… something that can never be fully guaranteed. Political and economic tides change and forces of nature can have devastating effects as we have seen with the destruction of Palmyra in Syria, the devastating fires at the National Museum of Brazil, Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris and, more closer to home, the Mackintosh building fire at the Glasgow School of Art, Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s masterwork. There is a grief that comes from these lost buildings, their histories and what they had come to represent & symbolise. Recognising that there can be a profound regret and sadness at the cultural losses and a significant connection with the past means we can act today to look around us and appreciate the cultural heritage all around us. Many of us have access to a camera or camera phone and may even walk past these buildings every day. All it takes is looking up, taking a snap and uploading it in seconds and you’ve done something amazing to help document our cultural heritage for all time.
That’s why it’s so important that we take the opportunity to document our cultural heritage now for future generations before it is too late. Share your high quality pics of listed buildings and monuments to Wikimedia Commons and help preserve our cultural heritage online. After days out, weekend breaks and holidays at home & abroad, there will be gigabytes of pics taken in recent months and years. These could remain on your memory card or be shared to Commons and help illustrate Wikipedia for the benefit of all.
Aside from being great fun, Wiki Loves Monuments is a way of capturing a snapshot of our nation’s cultural heritage for future generations and documenting our country’s most important historic sites. Don’t wait till it’s too late, do your bit today! Click here to view a map of your local area to get started.
You just take a quick look at the map, take a pic and upload. It takes seconds and is the easiest way to take part in this year’s competition.
If each one of us took just 1 pic, we’d have this sewn up in a couple of weeks. Which is when Wiki Loves Monuments closes – end of 30 September 2019. But if you can do more then great.
#ScotWiki #WikiLovesMonuments
ps. If nothing else, let’s give our counterparts in Ireland, England and Wales a run for their money in terms of how many images we can upload. A little friendly rivalry never hurts, right?
Scotland uploaded 300+ images in 2016. That rose to 2,100 in 2017 with 1,351 of those uploaded by staff at the University of Edinburgh. In 2018, Scotland smashed it with 4,411 images uploaded. Let’s smash it again this September!
Let’s see if we can get pics from ALL over Scotland this year. Everyone is welcome to take part and every picture helps.
Glenfinnan Viaduct at Loch Shiel won 2nd place in the 2017 UK prizes, let’s see if we can win first place this year! Pic by Paul Stümke [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], from Wikimedia Commons
This post was written by Delphine Dallison, Wikimedian in Residence at the Scottish Library and Information Council (SLIC) and Scotland Programme Co-ordinator for Wikimedia UK, Sara Thomas.Wiki Loves Monuments is an international photo competition which takes part throughout the month of September, and is supported by the Wikimedia Foundation. The aim is to crowdsource as many high quality, openly licensed photos as possible of scheduled monuments and listed buildings throughout the world.In the UK, there will be prizes for the best photos of a site in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales as well as prizes for the best UK photos overall. The latter will then be put forward for international prizes. (A picture of Glenfinnan Viaduct at Loch Shiel won 2nd place in the 2017 UK prizes, let’s see if we can win first place this year!)
Portobello beach by Photochrom Print Collection [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons is a free repository of photographs, audio and video content that anyone can use, re-use or distribute. Images on Commons can also be used to illustrate Wikipedia articles – which can then be seen by a global audience. But not all of our rich heritage is represented – there are a number of gaps when it comes to the coverage of Scotland – and this year, we’d like to do what we can to change that.Is your organisation or group looking for activities for September? Wiki Loves Monuments can be a great activity for local social or volunteer groups, not just those those concerned with photography or history. Why not organise a heritage walk to take pictures of listed buildings in the local area, and visit the local museum or library at the same time?
How do you take part?
Register for an account on Wikimedia Commons. (Individuals only, no organisational accounts.)If you already have a Wikipedia account, no need to register for a new account on Wikimedia Commons, you can use the same account for Wikimedia Commons. To enter the competition you must make sure that your account has a valid email address and that your email is activated. To check that, once you have logged in, look for “My preferences” tab at the top right of the page. Click on it, and then select “enable email from other users.” This will allow the competition organisers and other registered users on Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons to contact you but will not make your email address publicly available.
Wiki Loves Monuments – dynamic map of Edinburgh showing listed buildings requiring an image (in red).
What should you photograph? How do you upload it?
In Scotland, the subjects eligible to be entered in Wiki Loves Monuments are those designated by Historic Environment Scotland references for Listed Buildings and Scheduled Monuments. If you’re not sure what buildings or monuments are classed as listed, don’t worry! We’ve got a great tool for you to use to upload your photos which includes an interactive map.
Blue pins on the map indicate monuments which already have a photo on Wikimedia Commons, whereas red pins indicate where they are missing. Select your town or city then wander around your local area and look for buildings or monuments with red pins. You can take photos on smartphones, tablets or cameras and then upload them by selecting the appropriate pin on the map and clicking upload. Make sure that you are logged into your Wikimedia Commons account and follow the basic instructions. Every photo uploaded via the interactive map will be entered into the Wiki Loves Monuments.
You can take more than one photo of a building or monument. Preferably one should be a photo of the building or monument as a whole, but also use your photographic flair to add photos of key features, inside views or behind the scenes features that the public doesn’t normally get to see. Doors Open Day runs throughout September and is a great opportunity to organise a photography tour of a building or a tour of the local listed monuments in your town.
Other tips:
Not sure that your photo skills are up to the competition? Don’t worry about it, the important thing is to take part. The more photos we can crowdsource, the more we can improve the coverage of listed buildings and monuments in Scotland, which is our ultimate goal. You can also check the Wiki Loves Monuments blog for tips on how to best take architectural photos.
Wiki Loves Monuments is aimed at everyone! You don’t have to be an expert photographer, or have prior experience with any of the Wikimedia projects.
The competition runs through the whole of September from the 1st till the 30th and any entries uploaded during that time will be part of the competition. Photos don’t have to have been taken during September though, so you can add old photos, as long as they’ve not been previously uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. Doors Open Day is a great opportunity to tie in with Wiki Loves Monuments, so if you know local DOD venues or if you work with a local heritage officer, please advertise it with them too.
How can you take part?
Do you work in or near a listed building? Add a picture!
Perhaps I’m a tad biased but I’d tend to agree. There’s nowhere quite like it.
Yet, we who live and work here can take it for granted that our beautiful locations, listed buildings and monuments will always be there… something that can never be fully guaranteed. Political and economic tides change and forces of nature can have devastating effects as we have seen with the Mackintosh building fire at the Glasgow School of Art, Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s masterwork.
The Mackintosh Building in 2012 (CC-BY, via Flickr)
That’s why it’s so important that we take the opportunity to document our cultural heritage now for future generations before it is too late. Share your high quality pics of listed buildings and monuments to Wikimedia Commons and help preserve our cultural heritage online. After days out, weekend breaks and holidays at home & abroad, there will be gigabytes of pics taken in recent months and years. These could remain on your memory card or be shared to Commons and help illustrate Wikipedia for the benefit of all.
Aside from being great fun, Wiki Loves Monuments is a way of capturing a snapshot of our nation’s cultural heritage for future generations and documenting our country’s most important historic sites. Don’t wait till it’s too late, do your bit today! Click here to view a map of your local area to get started.
You just take a quick look at the map, take a pic and upload. It takes seconds and is the easiest way to take part in this year’s competition.
I was surprised to see Ryries, a public house near Haymarket Station was a listed building on the Wiki Loves Monuments map; a building I pass every day so it was an easy one to snap and upload.
If each one of us took just 1 pic, we’d have this sewn up in a couple of weeks. Which is when Wiki Loves Monuments closes – end of 30 September 2018. But if you can do more then great.
#ScotWiki #WikiLovesMonuments
ps. If nothing else, let’s give our counterparts in Ireland, England and Wales a run for their money in terms of how many images we can upload. A little friendly rivalry never hurts, right?
Scotland uploaded 300+ images in 2016. That rose to 2,100 in 2017 with 1,351 of those uploaded by staff at the University of Edinburgh.
This year we’re inviting Scotland’s public libraries to take part through Delphine Dallison, Wikimedian in Residence at the Scottish Library and Information Council.
Let’s see if we can get pics from ALL over Scotland this year. Everyone is welcome to take part and every picture helps.
Perhaps I’m a tad biased but I’d tend to agree. There’s nowhere quite like it.
Yet, we who live and work here can take it for granted that our beautiful locations, listed buildings and monuments will always be there… something that can never be fully guaranteed. Political and economic tides change and forces of nature can have devastating effects as we have seen in recent days.
That’s why it’s so important that we take the opportunity to document our cultural heritage now for future generations before it is too late.
The world’s largest photo competition, Wiki Loves Monuments, takes place for the whole of September. Share your high quality pics of listed buildings and monuments to Wikimedia Commons and help preserve our cultural heritage online. After days out, weekend breaks and holidays at home & abroad, there will be gigabytes of pics taken in recent months and years. These could remain on your memory card or be shared to Commons and help illustrate Wikipedia for the benefit of all. Entry is free and the best pics will win a prize.
Aside from being great fun, Wiki Loves Monuments is a way of capturing a snapshot of our nation’s cultural heritage for future generations and documenting our country’s most important historic sites. See the rules and how to enter.
Ryries near Haymarket Station, Edinburgh. Own work by me via Wikimedia Commons for Wiki Loves Monuments 2017, CC-BY-SA
I used the handy Wiki Loves Monuments UK tool which shows you places near you, indicated with a red dot, that require a pic.
Wiki Loves Monuments – dynamic map of Edinburgh showing listed buildings requiring an image (in red).
You just take a quick look at the map, take a pic and upload. It takes seconds and is the easiest way to take part in this year’s competition. (There is also another WLM map tool if you want to search for addresses, either in UK or further afield).
I was surprised to see Ryries, a public house near Haymarket Station was a listed building on the Wiki Loves Monuments map; a building I pass every day so it was an easy one to snap and upload.
If each one of us took just 1 pic, we’d have this sewn up in a couple of weeks. Which is when Wiki Loves Monuments closes – end of September 2017.But if you can do more then great.
Don’t wait till it’s too late, do your bit today! Click here to view a map of your local area to get started.
#1picture1person #ScottishHeritage #WLMUK17
ps. Once the new pictures are uploaded then comes the additional fun part of adding those images to relevant Wikipedia pages so that millions around the world can enjoy a picture you have taken. If you fancy helping out with that then we are having a Wiki meetup 2pm to 5pm on Friday 29th September and you can drop-in at any point to add a pic to a Wiki page. Signup here.
If nothing else, let’s give our counterparts in Ireland and Wales a run for their money in terms of how many images we can upload. A little friendly rivalry never hurts, right?
Mary Susan McIntosh (1936–2013) sociologist, feminist, political activist and campaigner for lesbian and gay rights in the UK. A 1974 colour photograph from her time as a Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. CC-BY-SA
Yesterday this ‘Did You Know‘ fact was on Wikipedia’s front page. The front page is viewed, on average, 25 million times a day.
While her page has only been live on Wikipedia for two months, Mary’s page has now been viewed in excess of 7000 timesbecause a) editors were motivated to address Wikipedia’s gender gap problem where less than 15% of editors are female and less than 17% of biographies are of notable women and b) we felt Mary’s story was important enough that it should be shared on Wikipedia’s front page and introduced to an audience of up to 25 million.
Did you know you could do that? Nominate a page newly created in the last seven days, or significantly expanded on, to be included on Wikipedia’s front page in this way?
The Wikimedia residency at the University of Edinburgh has been as much about demystifying the largest reference work on the internet as anything else so here are some other things I feel are worth knowing in the spirit of ‘did you know‘?:
Did you know that Wikipedia works with Turnitin to address issues of plagiarism and copyright violation using the Copyvio tool and that the Dashboard for managing assignments now offers Authorship Highlighting of students’ edits thereby making it easier to visualize and evaluate student work.
Did you know that Wikipedia does not want you to cite it? It is a tertiary source; an aggregator of articles with facts backed up from reliable published secondary sources. You can’t cite Wikipedia but you can cite the references it uses. In this way it is reframed as the digital gateway to further research sources.
Did you know that you can upload openly-licensed longer texts to Wikisource (the free content library) which are transcribed into 100% searchable HTML so that works such as Thomas Jehu’s digitised PhD thesis can be linked to, one click away, from his Wikipedia article or out-of-copyright texts such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s book on ‘Edinburgh’ (1914) can be enjoyed by new audiences?
Did you know that Wikidata, Wikimedia’s repository of structured open data, now has 3 million linked citations added to it which can be queried using the new Scholia tool – a tool to handle scientific bibliographic information? (The Scholia Web service creates on-the-fly scholarly profiles for researchers, organizations, journals, publishers, individual scholarly works, and for research topics. To collect the data, it queries the SPARQL-based Wikidata Query Service).
Did you know that Altmetric include Wikipedia citations in their impact metrics and that Altmetric automatically picks up on citations through Wikipedia’s citation generator?
Did you know that releasing images through Wikimedia Commons can result in a huge increase in views with detailed metrics about the number of views these images are accruing? E.g. Images released by the Bodleian Library have accrued 218,460,571 views to date.
Did you know about the WikiCite initiative? Tidying up the citations on Wikipedia to make a consistent, queryable bibliographic repository enhancing the visibility and impact of research.
Did you know that thanks to the new I4OC initiative (April 2017) there exists a collaboration between scholarly publishers, researchers, and other interested parties to promote the unrestricted availability of scholarly citation data? Before I4OC started, publishers releasing references in the open accounted for just 1% of citation metadata collected annually by Crossref. Following discussions over the past months, several subscription-access and open-access publishers have recently made the decision to release reference list metadata publicly. These include: American Geophysical Union, Association for Computing Machinery, BMJ, Cambridge University Press, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, EMBO Press, Royal Society of Chemistry, SAGE Publishing, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley. These publishers join other publishers who have been opening their references through Crossref for some time.
Did you know that thanks to Wikidata you can now query, analyse & visualise the largest reference work on the internet? You can also add your research data to combine datasets on Wikidata.
Did you know that the University of Portsmouth have been running a Wikipedia assignment called Human Geography for the last five years where each student is assigned a different short stub article for a village in England and Wales, and asked to expand it to provide a rounded description of the place and, in particular, an account of its historical development?
Did you know that, so far, they have left Scotland untouched and so there will be many villages and towns in Scotland ripe to have articles created and improved?
Did you know that Wikivoyage is Wikipedia’s sister project and a Lonely Planet-esque travel guide? Students can write articles about their hometown area with bullet-pointed sections on ‘Things to do’, ‘Things to See’, ‘Things to Buy’, ‘Places to stay’ with Open Street Maps included and images added from Wikimedia Commons.
Did you know how students and staff at the University of Edinburgh have reacted to the Wikipedia in the Classroom assignments we have run this year? You can view a compilation of their feedback in this video.
Did you know that students can create entire textbooks, chapters of textbooks, on Wikipedia’s sister project, Wikibooks?
Did you know that every September the world’s largest photography competition takes place, Wiki Loves Monuments? Participants are encouraged to photograph and upload images of listed buildings and monuments to document our cultural heritage.
Did you know that the WikiShootme tool helps identify notable buildings in your area that require an image uploading?
Did you know that taking part in Wikimedia activities does not always require a heavy time component and that short, fun activities can also help: adding a citation through the Citation Hunt tool (“Whack-a-mole for citations”), playing the Wikidata game, adding images through WikiShootMe and FIST; taking part in fun Wiki Races (6 degrees of separation for Wiki links between articles).
Did you know that you can learn how to edit at our 90 minute training sessions and how to become a trainer at our 3 hour Train the Trainer events?
Did you know that I can deliver presentations and training as you require; be it on Wikisource (the free content library), Wikidata (the free and open respository of structured data), Wikimedia Commons (the free media respository), the Wikicite initiative, WikiVoyage (the free travel guide), writing articles for Wikipedia, adding your research to Wikipedia or something else entirely?
If you would like to find out more then feel free to contact me at ewan.mcandrew@ed.ac.uk
Want to become a Wikipedia editor?
Want to become a Wikipedia trainer?
Want to run a Wikipedia course assignment?
Want to contribute images to Wikimedia Commons?
Want to learn more about Wikisource?
Want to contribute your research to Wikipedia?
Want to contribute your research data to Wikidata?
